URBAN RENEWAL IN GLASGOW
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9485.1960.tb00138.x |
| Published date | 01 November 1960 |
| Date | 01 November 1960 |
URBAN RENEWAL IN GLASGOW
THE salient features of Glasgow’s housing problem are all too familiar.
The rapid growth of population in the last century, associated with
industrial development in the Clyde basin, and the waves
of
immigra-
tion from the Highlands and Ireland have resulted in a high degree
of concentration of Scotland’s population in the city, and migration
since
1931
has served only to stabilize the total. The
1951
Census
shod
21
per cent.
of
Scotland‘s population living in Glasgow,
a
degree of concentration much higher than Greater London’s
8
per
cent.
of
the population of England and Wales. Nearly three persons
out of four are housed in the congested central areas of the city; the
old closely-built tenements in those areas consist of houses which
are too small, poorly equipped and badly overcrowded. The resulting
net residential densities are higher than in any other urban area
of
the country and are estimated at an average of
400
persons per acre.
Half of the houses in
1951
were of one or two rooms;
a
quarter
of
the
population lived more than two
to
a room.
Estimates of the size of the rehousing problem involved vary
considerably. The proposed redevelopment of the central area is
expected
to
displace some
200,000,
but the total displacement is
frequently quoted at
300,000.
These figures must be taken in con-
junction with the physical limitations
of
Glasgow’s
site.
Further
expansion
is
virtually impossible, either because of the nature of the
terrain, or the close proximity of the built-up areas of adjoining towns,
and no more new building sites remain within the city boundaries.
Hence the proposals
to
decant large numbers of the population out-
with the area entirely.
The problem was first comprehensively studied and this solution
put forward as inevitable in the Report of the Clyde Valley Regional
Planning Committee in 1946. This estimated that
500,000
people,
or
about half the population, would have
to
be moved from the con-
gested centre and that
no
more than half of these could be housed
on
the outskirts. Acceptance of this view was by
no
means immediate.
The overwhelming shortage
of
houses and the relative ease
of
building
on the remaining sites on the periphery prompted a resumption of
the me-war policy.
Only
the harsh reality that
no
more vacant
housing sites remained turned attention to redevelopment
of
the old
central areas and raised overspill
to
the status of official policy.
The Hutchesontown-Gorbals Redevelopment Scheme is the first
instalment in the renewal
of
the central area.
It
involves the virtual
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